Next Year in Havana(72)

“I have some questions about my grandmother. Ana thought you might be able to shed some light on them.”

“Of course, what would you like to know?”

“I found a box of my grandmother’s things.” I tell her about the letters. “Did you know about him?”

“Yes.”

I lean forward in my seat.

“Well, I knew some of it,” she clarifies. “Those last days—their last days in Cuba—were heartbreaking for Elisa. The last day I saw her—”

A tear trickles down her cheek.

“What happened?”

Magda sighs. “The family left. It was a terrible day. We weren’t supposed to know, of course. They pretended they were going for a trip. They would do that—your great-grandmother and the girls. Go to Europe or America to shop. They were careful; all it took was the wrong word overheard and repeated to the wrong person. Especially for a family like the Perezes.”

She makes the motion of a beard over her face.

We all know who the bearded one is.

Fidel.

“I knew, though, when I looked in my girls’ faces. Isabel took it the hardest at first. Her fiancé stayed behind. Isabel was never one for talking about her emotions. Eventually her sisters would pry whatever was bothering her out of her and she’d open up to them, but it took time.

“Beatriz was angry,” Magda continues. “She was always fired up about something. Your great-grandfather loved her best; no matter how hard he tried to act like he loved his girls equally, you could tell. She drove him crazy, but he loved her. They got into a fight in his study the night before they left. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but you couldn’t help but overhear—the whole house listened to them carrying on. She didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to give Fidel the satisfaction of winning.”

That sounds like Beatriz.

“Maria was the baby, of course. The girls all tried to shield her as much as they could. Alejandro—”

Her voice breaks off as she makes the sign of the cross over her body.

A lump swells in my throat. I’ve grown so used to my great-uncle’s name evoking that same reaction among his sisters.

“Your grandmother was my favorite,” Magda whispers conspiratorially. “I didn’t have children then; I hadn’t met my husband yet. Elisa was mine as much as she was your great-grandmother’s. In those days, the nannies raised the children. Not like now. I dried Elisa’s tears. Held her when she was in pain. And after what happened with that boy—”

My heart pounds.

“The revolutionary?”

“Yes.”

“Please. What did she tell you about him?”

Magda’s expression darkens. “He was trouble; I knew it from the first moment she mentioned him.”

“Did she tell you his name?”

“No. She never did.”

Disappointment fills me. We’ve come this far in our search only to be back where we started.

“She didn’t want to tell me about him at first, of course, but then she didn’t have much of a choice,” Magda continues. “She was scared, and she needed help with the baby.”

It takes a moment for her words to register, to hear them over the white noise rushing through my ears.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

She blinks. “I assumed that was why you wanted to know about him, because of the baby.”

“What baby?”





chapter twenty


Elisa


It’s strange how the world around you can change in the blink of an eye, how the difference between a few hours can mean everything. In one moment it was 1958 and the world was one thing; minutes passed and then it was 1959, and the world as we knew it disappeared.

The morning light confirms what we learned last night. Batista has fled and left us in the hands of the men marching into Havana from the countryside, the Sierra Maestra. Is Pablo with them? What will become of my brother? Their return is the only glimmer of hope in all of this, and I cling to it now.

Gossip filters in throughout the day. The neighbors are out, Ana’s parents stopping by, everyone gathering around the television and radio, attempting to discern what will happen next. They say the fighters are coming back, pouring in from the mountains, carrying weapons and dressed in olive green fatigues, flaunting long, scraggly beards. It appears as though the victory has caught them nearly as off guard as it has caught the rest of us. Batista seemed like an inevitability we would always suffer. Fidel is a looming unknown.

I sit in the house with my parents, my sisters, making idle conversation.

No, I didn’t realize the Mendozas fled with Batista. What a shame we didn’t get to say good-bye.

Workers are striking, the city celebrating, but our street in Miramar is eerily quiet except for the trickle of neighbors. Everyone cites a friend of a friend when they give their information; everyone speaks with an air of authority as though they possess a map for the future.

By the afternoon, I can’t take it anymore. My stomach is in knots, dizziness hitting me in waves, and I crave the fresh air. The atmosphere in the house is like being closeted in a sickroom. I flee to my room, changing into a pair of trousers and a cotton blouse, sliding my most serviceable pair of sandals onto my feet.